Online advertising has been a hot topic for the past week or so, with Ars Technica trying out an interesting, somewhat desperate experiment wherein they blocked access to their content for people using Adblock. Of course, if this were to become some kind of movement among publishers, it would probably just spark a technological cat-and-mouse game that would surely be reminiscent of DRM cracking or iPhone jailbreaking. But in their post-mortem, Ars states that it was a worthwhile awareness campaign, and I hope that's true. But I thought it would be a good idea to try to bring the collective OSNews brainpower together and crowdsource the idea of how to raise money for a web site in an age where advertising is increasingly un-viable.

As an IT professional, with some influence on buying decisions, I am probably an ideal target for online advertising on OSNews. I have used Adblock in the past, but having read this story, I've whitelisted the site. An ad just targeted me with a geographically relevant job website, and I clicked through to see what's available. So, online ads work when they are targeted well.

In my spare time I run a specialist aviation forum, it costs me $50US a month to run which is covered through user donations. I've considered the paid subscription route, but thats a great way to kill a community. Advertising is never going to work (too specialised!) so donations is the only workable method.